GEOFLUENT VS. STRAIGHT MACHINE TRANSLATION: UNDERSTANDING THE DIFFERENCES

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1 SOLUTION BRIEF GEOFLUENT VS. STRAIGHT MACHINE TRANSLATION: UNDERSTANDING THE DIFFERENCES by EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Real-time translation (RTT) technology is an effective solution for instantly translating content from one to any number of other languages. When added to communications platforms across channels like chat, ticketing, , etc., it enables organizations to interact across hundreds of languages using their existing contact center, service desk and other staff reducing the need to hire bi-lingual agents while enabling engagement with consumers, employees and partners that otherwise couldn t communicate. Many organizations considering real-time translation solutions evaluate GeoFluent and straight machine translation engines like Google Translate and Microsoft Translator. There are significant differences between them - this whitepaper details the most important factors you should consider, including: 1. Translation quality 2. Translation customization 3. Continuous translation optimization 4. Security and Data Protection 5. Pre-built integrations Visit geofluent.com or contact GeoFluentSales@lionbridge.com for more information. TRANSLATION QUALITY Because RTT technology is machine-based, organizations know the translation goal is immediacy, comprehend-ability and actionability. While it isn t human-level translation, enterprises rightly expect that the translation quality be high enough to enable effective communications. Translation quality: Straight Machine Translation (MT) A historic challenge of using straight MT engines is garbage in, garbage out: What this means is that the quality of the translation depends on the source text being grammatically clean and accurate. If it isn t, the translation most often will be incomprehensible. Another example is the word flat which can refer to an apartment or a shape. Straight MT engines do not understand those nuances. Technology innovation is making straight MT more reliable than ever, driven in large part by the advance of neural networks. For commonly used languages pairs like English to Spanish, neural networks are delivering higher levels of quality than ever seen before. For language pairs traditionally difficult for MT, such as English to Korean, neural networks are providing quality that would be consistent with easier languages leveraging strong statistical-based MT language pairs. Without any linguistic customization or human involvement, however, the challenge is to ensure that straight MT-based multilingual communications are accurate, contextually correct, meaningful, relevant, and fulfill their intended purpose. Organizations considering this approach typically need to have in-house expertise in languages, machine learning and machine translation in order for this approach to be successful.

2 Translation quality: GeoFluent GeoFluent was designed specifically to overcome the inherent limitations of MT engines, eliminating the need for customers to be language and translation experts themselves. We do this three ways: 1. Each MT engine has their own strengths, whether that be a specific language, use case or industry. Every GeoFluent engagement begins with our language experts selecting the right MT engine or engines for the client s use case, language, channel, and industry mix. For example, a client that wants to deploy chat across Japanese and Spanish for Level 1 Support will likely utilize 2 baseline MT engines to ensure best translation quality. 2. GeoFluent also applies normalization rules (e. g. linguistic business rules) to clean and fix content before it goes through the translation engine allowing clients to avoid typical MT errors caused by common slang, misspellings, acronyms, lingo, etc. (e.g. garbage in, garbage out). GeoFluent supports two types of normalizing text: Input Normalization (prior to translation) and Output Normalization (correcting common MT errors). Input Normalization is a technique for taking idiosyncratic text and preparing it for better translation by normalizing it to a more standard form that MT engines will recognize clearly. For example, most languages contain common contractions that are used frequently in a chat environment. An English example is BRB is used for Be Right Back. Lionbridge s normalization techniques can change a simple BRB to be right back so that the machine translation can appropriately translate the correct message. In other words, Input Normalization allows GeoFluent to take a sentence that straight MT would translate incorrectly and change it into a well-formed sentence that translates perfectly. Post-translation normalization (Output Normalization) works almost identically to Input Normalization, but on the output from the MT system. GeoFluent uses regular expressions and literal searches to identify things that we know our customers do not want in the output and replaces them with something that the customer does want. Examples of output normalization include: Regional Difference: None of the major machine translation engines offers regionally specific versions of any languages (for example, Canadian French). GeoFluent can change, for instance, Latin American Spanish vocabulary into European Spanish vocabulary, or American English vocabulary into British English. Formal vs. Informal Speech: GeoFluent can search for formal pronouns (for example, vous ) and their associated verb forms (for example, êtes ) and change them to informal pronouns ( tu ) and verbs ( es ). 3. Lionbridge has more than 20 years experience helping clients communicate across languages. That expertise is applied through industry-specific language models that sit on top of the selected and trained MT engine(s). These are available for industries, channels, languages and specific use cases. Remember the example of the word flat? For travel companies, the GeoFluent hospitality language model ensures that the translation engine understands that the context relates to apartments.

3 TRANSLATION CUSTOMIZATION Every organization has its own unique vocabulary, including product and service names and terms that are core to their brand. It s critical that these terms not be lost in the translation process. This is where translation customization comes into play. Translation Customization: Straight MT Without significant in-house language and translation expertise and resources, it is exceedingly difficult for most organizations to customize a MT engine. This takes on added importance for highly personalized or customer-centric use cases like those of contact centers. Because MT engines may not consistently recognize branded products and services across languages, the lost context can drive down quality metrics like CSAT and NPS and increase customer effort. Stories abound in all industries about organizations that have tried straight MT but have given up because of its inability to be effective. Translation Customization: GeoFluent Languages and translation are Lionbridge s expertise. We bring them to bear in the GeoFluent linguistic engine that we customize for each client. Our language team works closely with clients to identify the brand terms and vocabulary unique and important to their organizations. These assets are loaded in the client-specific GeoFluent engines to ensure that, no matter the language they re being translated into, they re translated correctly every time. We help clients develop three primary types of linguistic assets: 1. Do Not Translate (Brand Terms): These are the company, product and other terms that should remain in the original language even after translation. transcripts, translation memories, s and your other multilingual communications to see which terms are used most frequently. We also look to see how terminology is used in practice, rather than on paper. For example, a glossary may include a term like GeoFluent real-time translation but agents instead write GF real-time translation. This is important to know: The language team can create a rule to expand the acronym to the full form or add the term in both expressions. 3. Frequently used sentences and phrases: In contact center and other environments, we often observe that agents and staff have their own set of frequently used messages that are either stored or retrieved from the internal knowledge base. The GeoFluent language team works with clients to identify phrases or responses used with enough frequency and ensures that those are translated with complete accuracy every time. The customized GeoFluent linguistic engine is a powerful tool. If you re using GeoFluent for chat today and add ticketing next year, for example, the engine is already built and ready. Besides real-time translation, clients using GeoFluent for translation/localization and interpretation have an added benefit: The same engine powering RTT for self-service and digital channels is also leveraged when translating something like a Word document as well as leveraged by the GeoFluent telephonic interpreters. Need to translate a sentence on the fly? Customers can use the GeoFluent customer portal to translate that content instantly - leveraging their customized GeoFluent linguistic engine. That same self-service portal allows customers to manage their linguistic assets, including brand terms. The ability to leverage the customized GeoFluent engine across communications channels and content type allows customers to amplify the success of their multilingual communications. 2. Glossaries: These are terms with required translations in each language. If your organization doesn t have this information identified, the GeoFluent language team will review

4 CONTINUOUS TRANSLATION OPTIMIZATION Real-time translation is most effective when it s refined and optimized based on language- and channel-specific feedback from users and their customers. Left to run for extended periods of time without evaluation can lead to unintended degradation. Continuous Translation Optimization: Straight MT As mentioned above, most organizations aren t experts in languages or translation. Therefore, it s important that you realistically answer the question of whether you have both the expertise and long-term commitment to make a straight MT strategy successful. Continuous Translation Optimization: GeoFluent GeoFluent is a managed service and the GeoFluent language experts take the guesswork out of ongoing optimization. Having customized the engine initially, they already know your business and communications channels. On a regular basis, this team meets with clients to conduct GeoFluent Optimization Sessions. In collaboration with the customer, the language team evaluates every aspect of the customer s real-time translation instance, including: Is the selected MT engine(s) still the best fit? Are there opportunities to improve the performance of individual languages? Are there additional GeoFluent libraries that can be leveraged? Are the existing Do not Translate, Glossaries and Canned/ Frequently Used Messages effective and do they need updates? Should new Do Not Translate, Glossaries and Canned/Frequently Used Messages be created? Are the communications channel-specific best practices being followed? These are questions that our language experts will ask to always improve your GeoFluent real-time translation results. It is included as part of the subscription-based service. SECURITY AND DATA PROTECTION Security is a paramount consideration for real-time translation. This is especially true if your content includes customer, financial and/or personally identifiable information. Security and data protection: Straight MT Common Sense Advisory, a leading research company focused on language services, says that an often overlooked aspect of straight MT solutions is security. Using these applications may have the unintended effect of your, employees and your suppliers unconsciously conspiring to broadcast your confidential information, trade secrets, and intellectual property (IP) to the world. This means that, depending on which MT engine you use, it may or may not comply with your data security and usage policies. Many global companies do not have established policies around this and aren t even aware that this data leak is even occurring. CSA adds that, MT sites can use your data in ways you did not intend. While content ownership remains with the creator, free MT providers claim usage rights under their terms and conditions. For example, Google notes that it does not claim any ownership in the content that you submit or in the translations of that content returned by the API. However, as you follow the policy links, you learn that When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. Security and data protection: GeoFluent GeoFluent was designed with security in mind. The SaaSbased solution does not store or record any source text or the corresponding translation. Any translations performed with GeoFluent are encrypted while in flight and the data is never at rest. Equally important, all PII and PCI data is masked. If you have EU Data Privacy concerns (Privacy Shield), GeoFluent has data centers in Europe that ensure data never leaves the EU. GeoFluent has passed security audits with many of the world s largest companies.

5 PRE-BUILT INTEGRATIONS The best real-time translation technology isn t effective if it isn t easy to use. How do you plan to deploy it? Do you have technical resources and expertise? These are important questions to ask as you evaluate straight MT and GeoFluent. Pre-Built Integrations: Straight MT APIs make adding an MT engine to your homegrown applications relatively easy, assuming the application was built with real-time translation in mind. When dealing with commercially available communications platforms, it is cost and time prohibitive to attempt to build connectors between them and public MT engines like Google. ABOUT LIONBRIDGE Lionbridge enables more than 800 world-leading brands to increase international market share, speed adoption of products and effectively engage their customers in local markets worldwide. Using our innovative cloud technology platforms and our global crowd of more than 100,000 professional cloud workers, we provide translation, online marketing, global content management and application testing solutions that ensure global brand consistency, local relevancy and technical usability across all touch points of the customer lifecycle. Based in Waltham, Mass., Lionbridge maintains solution centers in 26 countries. Pre-Built Integrations: GeoFluent Integrations to GeoFluent are already available with the leading contact center, service management, and enterprise communications and collaboration platforms. For a detailed list of pre-built integrations visit From chat and to ticketing and forums, these pre-built integrations make time to implementation fast: often, only requiring 2-4 weeks for our language experts to build your customized engine. These plug-ins have passed rigorous certification programs from our partners so you can be confident in adding them to your existing platforms. And if you ever have questions, you can count on GeoFluent s 24x7x365 support. LEARN MORE AT LIONBRIDGE.COM